b”h
Our realities are made by our own hands.
Every day this is being proved to me in an incredibly powerful way.
I try to hold on. Focus my eyes on an object. Try not to think at all. But just as Rousseau commented, “The man does not love to think. Once started, he can’t stop though”: I literally feel my thoughts wander nonstop through my body . It’s usual, it’s not something new. What startles me is when I realise it’s not the sort of thoughts which bound me to the present moment. It’s solely internal. I reflect on things said and done, on what they cause, on what I’ve seen today and what I am planning to see; whether it is raining outside and when it will begin to rain; where’s my mum, what is she doing?, and finally, when did I see this place the last time before now.
You see – not a single thought of what I’m doing now. I’ve focused my eyes on something, but I don’t even care. If you could scan my mind from outside, you wouldn’t be able to fix it at a certain point. It wanders from past to future. From empirical impressions to subjective and fictional expectations.
Where is the real world here?…
I leave it be.
When trying to catch my concentration and to force it to stand still instead of wandering around, I experience a feeling of growing emptiness as I don’t know what to think of the present moment. How to relate to the fact that I stand here and look at a wall or a chair. There can’t a full second be felt in which my mind isn’t trying to develop the idea of presence. No pause from reflection and digestion can be taken on its own.
So I leave it be. G-d is grand…
Reality is man-made. By me and for my own, even if I come to an agreement with my environment on certain abstract and physical matters so that we ca
n have a sort of a common basis. It sounds to general, but here an example: my mood.
I sit on a chair in the library, just woken up after having fallen asleep a while ago. My window view are tops of roofs, a grey sky and black trees standing still next to the houses. I feel weakly, turn some music on and put my earphones into my ears. Immediately, I’m droven away by the rhythm, the melody and the singer’s voice. I’m no longer perceiving the outside in its silent, neutral way. The song is melancholic and slow, lifts me high spiritually but still leaves space for traces of sadness. So I watch houses and think of those I’ve been in throughout my life; of how I want to change my everyday; of how difficult it is going to be for me to get up from this chair and continue spending my day in hurry and stress instead of watching and learning life silently.
Yet I know and I, in my momentual, intentional despair, hope for the next song to follow so that I can gain strength and optimism and get up from the chair and trust in myself that life will go on. I’m torn between proceeding to the next song or to remain with the quiet and sad one to enjoy my dreams.
Nothing in the world indicates though, that houses may be a reason for melancholy and the grey sky for stress. It’s still the same view from the window.
… And minutes later I’m on my way, hurrying down the roads, planning the next steps on my daily agenda. Forgotten the houses, the trees and the sadness.
So I leave it open, leave it be. There are many waves in the sea.
Too often during the day it’s being offered to us to detract ourselves from reality. Be those technical devices, books, films, music. At this point here I don’t care whether it’s for the good or for the bad. It’s a noteworthy fact, though: While detracting from the collective world, I automatically begin filling my own one.
– And that’s what I eventually exist for, isn’t it? The Talmud had known this long before me as its Sages stated that “One who saves a human being, saves a whole world”.
I live by the saying that in order to enjoy this world to the fullest, I have to have the desire to understand how it works. The absence of an omnipresent realty is a breathtaking observation I’ve been doing now for a couple of days. It shows me, on the one hand, how short-lived words and images are; it’s the deeds which contribute to our collective world which should have more importance and value.
And still, if we remind ourselves of the magic statement of Antoine de Saint-Éxupery, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye” and even take in account scientific remarks on physics, the answer would be all the same:
It’s solely your mind which adds or takes away the colours of a landscape.
Isralike
Is Real Reflection 